Shit And Shine - Titanic tribal-noise rituals

Shit And Shine is an Anglo/American beast (Texas and London are its outposts), purveyor of a fierce, rabid, ultra-tribal noise, often in service of sprawling, monolithic improvisations (backed by a variable number of drum kits) that live reach forms of often uncontrolled paroxysm. Keen to stay in the shadows (they never give interviews, in fact), Larry Mannigan (drums), Craig Clouse (guitar, bass, voice, electronics) and Frank Mckayhan (bass, guitar, voice) have, in just five years, given life to one of the most fascinating and gripping musical sagas of recent years. In their rabid ceremonies and their murky, deafening sub-sonic explorations converge traces of Brainbombs, Merzbow, Butthole Surfers, Boredoms, Napalm Death, Strangulated Beatoffs, Faust, Sharkbait and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, although, much more simply, you could imagine their music as an anarchic union between the merciless tornadoes of Rusted Shut and the dissolute percussive orgies of Crash Worship.

Between Austin and London

Before moving to London, Craig Clouse played, in his native Austin, in the ranks of Crown Roast, a band devoted to a savage noise-core. Once in London, however, he was approached by Hammerhead, who were looking to replace departing guitarist Paul Sanders. The return to the States thus allowed Clouse to play in one of the bands most important to his musical formation. After also lending his six-string to Neagtive Step, he set off to settle permanently in the English capital. There, after putting together TODD (with whom he released two interesting records: "Purity Pledge" and the more mature "Comes To Your House"), he formed Shit And Shine together with Mckayhan and Mannigan, with whom he was able to investigate his idea of noise heavy music in an even more radical way. As he would later state, in fact, what drives him in his musical quest is a passion for hyper-amplified, distorted sound. It would, however, above all be the emphasis placed on the rhythmic element that would give the band its distinctive character.

Signed by Riot Season, the three thus debuted in 2004 with the white vinyl, limited to 500 copies, of You're Lucky To Have Friends Like Us (15 tracks, 36'41"). Hampered by a production that wasn't quite up to par and by still-immature songwriting, the record is, however, not yet truly representative of their style. Fifteen vignettes sketched in the bold colors of noise, the most extreme metal and industrial music, suspended between black humor and desecration, for an anarchic pandemonium (a sonic non-place somewhere between the dissolute fragments of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282's "Mother Of All Saints" and the elusive Won James Won's "Tol's Toy") driven by a savage determination, though not always fully aware of its own real potential. Tracks like "The Trees Shall Mourn", "Tavern Snacks" and "Calling Them In" are feral examples of a caustic death-core, embittered by a disorderly, reckless approach. The breezy "Recommencons" (the Residents covering Serge Gainsbourg?), the dazed back-and-forth of "L'oubli", the paranoid cabaret of "A To Z Of Boy Singers", the electro elasticity of "Fishermans Jumper", the panoramic deepness of "Liberty Wallpaper" and the wiggling Caribbean funk of "Life Like A Life" belong instead to the more whimsically goofy side of their art. Yet, placed in context, even these latter compositions take on an alien character. They act as a counterweight, in fact, and together help round out the ultimate sense of murky post-noise psychoses such as "Maybe I'm Right Maybe I'm Wrong", "Don't Look At Me Don't Leave Me", "Spider" (this last one, an industrial-leaning percussive circle that foreshadows their traumatic knife-edge assaults) and "Bridge Of The Nose Nape Of The Neck" (a radioactive requiem cut through by abrasive, deadly gusts), while the field recordings of "I Could Make You Be A Woman" let the mystery thicken further, without suggesting any possible solution.

The stage is a battlefield. Onward, my brave soldiers!

When the band starts to perform live with extremely long improvisations built around towering rhythmic walls torn apart by claustrophobic maelstroms of lacerating screams and wild bursts of screeching electronics mixed with unhealthy blasts of guitar, the die is finally cast. Backing up these savage, already legendary performances, in 2005 Latitudes released the monumental, furious onslaught of Ladybird (1 track, 41'39"), or, as the insert included with the cardboard CD edition puts it: "4 drummers, 2 bassists and 1 toy keyboard = 1 riff, 41 minutes = evil fun". There's nothing more to add, except to invite you to listen to a record that certainly isn't for all tastes, but is capable of delivering an all-consuming musical experience, in some ways comparable to the one offered by Orthrelm on "OV". Considered by some to be their masterpiece, "Ladybird" gives no quarter across its forty-odd minutes of manic tribalism, of sonic terrorism taken to its maximum power, of demonic, ceremonial maximalism. From his keyboard station, Clouse leads the army, radiating acid swirls that coagulate into a genuine riff, repeated to the point of agony. The most common accusation leveled at music like this is that it sounds monotonous and starts from banal premises. By that same logic, one would have to condemn, say, the works of the minimalists... That said, while it's possible to trace the development of micro-variations that lend the sonic fabric a fairly substantial sense of "drama", in improvisations pushed this far in terms of repetitiveness one should, above all, try to tune into the trance state the music is trying to convey. The almost martial cadence of the rhythmic bed, moreover, seems to offer a kind of "warlike" experience in which the combatants are nothing but the mask and whatever lies behind the mask that truly makes us who we are. The potentially endless loop of the rhythm will thus come to reveal an almost purifying value. In the ceaseless expansion of the triad keyboard-riff/noise-swarm/circular groove, one can glimpse an opening toward reaching an other dimension in which active participants (the musicians) and passive ones (the listeners) fall into sync before finally surrendering to the most unrestrained delirium. It's no coincidence, in fact, that live the drum kits are often arranged in a circle, as if to underline that the staging of this unbridled rhythmic drive, beyond its material/physical meaning, also carries a "contained" ritualistic value. Whether or not to take part depends on a choice that deeply affects one's relationship with sonic proposals this extreme.

Meanwhile, the band's name also reaches the world of contemporary art thanks to Roman artist Carola Bonfili (born 1981), who, inspired by the music of Clouse & co., held her first solo show in the capital between March and April 2006, under the telling title "Shit & Shine".

On November 3rd, once again under the aegis of Riot Season, comes what is very likely the band's absolute peak: Jealous of Shit And Shine (9 tracks, 61'33"), a fierce distillation of freak-out psych noise that brings to fruition the ideas sketched out on "You're Lucky To Have Friends Like Us" (whose reissue, revised and expanded with two bonus tracks, was included with the first pressing of the record). Shit And Shine prove once again, and finally with full conviction, to be a band determined to leave no stone unturned, throwing themselves into prodigious noise-rock elucubrations. Jealous of Shit And Shine is, in every sense, a snapshot of our time, a black hole best symbolized by the terrifying half-hour of "Practicing To Be A Doctor" (with a mighty riff lifted from Strangulated Beatoffs), panzer motorik-sludge (Melvins + Earth + Neu!) with peaks of aching, titanic din. Six drummers sweeping the field from end to end; metallic thuds and piercing whistles; a buried voice with its usual haughty, standoffish swagger: an absolutely tremendous way to finally send the record off in glory.

To make the dish even more enjoyable, there's also the industrial strength music of Chrome, filtered through reckless manipulations ("Here Comes The Vikings") and the horrible, dense, impenetrable noise of the monster carnage of "No Darling, Its A Pentagram", a harsh aberration somewhere between a washing machine and a rollercoaster in the hands of a terrorist. "When Extreme Dogs Go Wrong", meanwhile, is a subhuman dance in which the rhythm section moves on two opposing, converging planes: the first, a metronomic metallurgical back-and-forth reviving the glories of master Liebezeit; the second, a gargantuan pulse underpinned by the stinging distortions of the guitars. Alien voices, scraps of savage electronics and rewind short-circuits do the rest, lavishing themselves on a truly exceptional track. These are experiments that lodge in the brain like deadly viruses, determined to defeat us little by little. At first you might find it hard to appreciate its vibrant, hysterical "body language", only to then surrender, inevitably, to an infernal tour de force the likes of which we hadn't seen materialize in a long time. The dying voice, the lopsided, half-hearted guitar (Mayo Thompson's ears will be burning...) and the industrial pulse of "Unchained Ladies Shopper" set the stage for the pestilential tunnel of "There Are 2 Bakers Now", an odyssey of humanoid regurgitations and shreds of brutal pornography, an otherworldly pilgrimage through the ruins of the psyche, a death agony at marching pace while the tape spews out the last deranged ravings of a maniac. In other words, madness is the last bulwark before the arrival of some bastard deity.

For its part, "Kitten Mask" lays down an electro thread along which disgustingly synthetic rhythmic figures slide, periodically thrown into disarray by the spasms of a vintage videogame. Another masterpiece, "Hot Vodka" is disco music regurgitated from hell, an amphetamine crucible of spiraling beats, a continental crooning high on who-knows-what, and reeling guitars. And if the worth of an album can also be measured by how its closing credits roll, then "Seeing Life Through A Young Mans Eyes", with its breezy swagger and its sprinkle of diamond-cut electro-pop, proves beyond doubt the greatness of an essential record.

Just a month later, in November, came Toilet Door Tits (2 tracks, 30'33"), part of a series of twelve releases marking the tenth anniversary of Belgium's Conspiracy Records. Two dense, hammering agglomerations: the title track, more destructive, builds a thunderous, kraut-oriented groove, skewered by colossal distortions and backed by the usual deformed voices buried under abnormal chaos; "The Biggest Cock In Christendom" instead stretches out, pachydermic, with a dark, claustrophobic mood and crude feedback deformations that bring to mind a slowed-down Gravitar... An invigorating listen, though not an essential one.

Roses and cherries for prostitutes dressed as bunnies

With no record yet documenting their earth-shaking live shows, the meritorious Noisetar label decided to remedy the situation, releasing the deflagrating orgy of Cunts With Roses (2007; 1 track, 28'13"). A genuine kick in the balls looped for a full 28 minutes. Four drum kits pounding out an obsessive, mangling 6/4, two basses pumping out the wrath of God, incendiary guitars spreading hatred and poison everywhere, cataclysms of lo-fi electronics crashing down diabolically and with not the slightest shred of reason (as if...), and a voice that occasionally breaks through to scream invectives and proclamations. In short, one of the most violent musical moments of all time. A rotten Ladybird, an unbridled apotheosis of Dionysian memory. Here and there, sudden short-circuits, black holes that tear through the lava flow, cracks through which a sickly light filters. An incandescent, bestial coupling of Chrome, Gravitar, Borbetomagus, Flying Luttenbachers and Blowhole. The level of intensity is such that the sound often seems to collapse, crumbling disastrously in on itself. Minimal variations and more incisive, palpable differential openings give breathing room, time and again, to this asphyxiating miasma of feedback, distortion, overtones and chords chipped like teeth taken to with a hammer. A space ritual of the post-atomic age, crossed by dark, derelict trails of ghost spaceships. The apocalypse admiring itself, lustful, in the boiling magma of an astral volcano. Judgment Day has arrived and nobody warned you? Locking yourselves indoors and pretending nothing's happening won't help you one bit. Sooner or later, these raving lunatics will come looking for you.

Preceded by the singles Cigarette Sequence and Charm And Counter Charm, Cherry (2008; 14 tracks, 74'16") is an "ascending" work that, as it marches relentlessly toward the destructive triumph of "The Rabbit Song" (yet another display of brute, stupefying force), clearly marks the boundary (and even synthesizes it!) between the slippery chaos of You're Lucky To Have Friends Like Us and the wicked psych-noise freak-out of Jealous of Shit And Shine, while also injecting the tribal-percussive epic of Crash Worship lineage into the "song" form. No longer merely a weapon of mass destruction, then, the band's boundless rhythmic charge becomes, on this record, a precise structural trait, around which some of the most creative and striking fires of their career are set blazing. Tribal and funky, "Am I Nice Guy?" is their own "The Gift", but steeped in a hypnotic, hard-boiled atmosphere, seemingly followed up by "Honestly Don't", with a spiraling guitar solo climbing a mighty rhythmic wall.

Elsewhere, beyond the electronically tickled techno-beat of "Charm And Counter Charm", it's the industrial broadsides ("Danielle", "Shockwave", and above all the Whitehouse-style metallurgical devastation of "Cigarette Sequence") and that nuclear after-day feeling (with the annihilating peak of "If You Knew Susie") that impose an ironically "brutalist" vision, the source of sarcastic degradations like the one post-punk suffers in the idiotic enclosure of "Flower Petal Sword", or the one visited on the rhythmic element itself, rendered "abstract", in "Sharlade". But this is music that, behind the face of an amused (?) nihilism, conceals above all an epic tension, a solemnity that in "Prize Winning" (one of their peaks) vibrates with subterranean exaltation: a swarm of drums marching imperiously under the banner of a Gravitar dehydrated and corroded by the digital-chemical delirium of a post-human crooner. And where the sonic signs finally take on the features of the most anguished nightmare (the poisonous, suffocating, shape-shifting cloud of the title track and the sculptural dark-ambient of "High Brooms", a stunning vertigo that stretches out for almost a quarter of an hour without the faintest glimmer of hope...), there surfaces the "shit and splendour" of an era (ours) that, unable to find any meaning in things, seems determined at all costs to make the irrational the only way out of the tunnel. Without forgetting, of course, the prodigious intoxication and dizziness that a pack of lunatics manages to give us every time they take over the stage with clubs and stretched animal skins ("The Rabbit Song", or rather, "even primitive men used to pick up chicks at the disco...").

The limited edition of a thousand copies comes with a bonus DVD containing Live at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, recorded in London. Over half an hour of imperious, doom-tinged noise that fills the space and takes no prisoners.

Tireless, the trio released, again in 2008, their seventh album in just five years of activity, Küss Mich Meine Liebe (8 tracks, 56'36"), celebrating their marriage with Load Records. The band shows little interest in further exploring what their previous album had introduced. So, with the rigid assaults of "Biggest Cock in Christendom" and "Toilet Door Tits" recovered, here come new compositions where catastrophic percussive upheavals (16 drummers deployed...) reverberate inside a vortex of thunderous clangor true to their most genuine intentions. Having noted the "mannerist" character and "conservative" shell, it's nonetheless true that, once peeled, the fruit is still juicy and packed with good vitamins for body and mind... Taking for granted a certain Ministry derivation in the brief cyber-punk turbulence of "Taking Robe Off" (probably the only real moment of "reformist" indulgence, along with the galactic, neck-breaking industrial of the title track), the record proceeds imperiously through the martial "The Germans Call it a Swimming Head", the slow, gargantuan (and almost certainly "slowed down" in post-production) "The Side Of The Road" — complete with a ritualistic gong trimming the ending —, the steel-mill chaos, with unconscious monsters Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 lurking, of "Mr. and Mrs. Gingerbread Hawaii", and the tribal noir of "Preventions Arise", which sounds like an "Am I Nice Guy" on barbiturates.

Despite receiving excellent reviews, the album nonetheless sounds more like a moment of transition than a new artistic vanishing point.

Only girls can save us from all this shit...

The band wastes no time, in any case, getting back into top form. With the percussive element ever more to the fore and an executional ferocity capable of shaking even the most skeptical, flabby listener, 229-2299 Girls Against Shit (2009; 17 tracks, 79'16") sounds like an angrier Jealous of Shit And Shine, and the sulfurous boogie of "Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?" (basically, Brainbombs and Suicide arguing over the ultimate meaning of "Metal Machine Music", concluding that it all stems from "Sister Ray"...) makes that immediately clear, slapping us around for a scant ten minutes. But without the contribution of electronic/noise defacement, the impact of the drum pummeling would, over time, boil down to a mere show of force. Rightly, then, probing beneath the surface of this extremely dense heap of skins and cymbals, one spots countless trajectories of frequencies, feedback, modulations and distortions, all blazing as if in a thick flow of incandescent magma. The same goes for the railway massacre, with its chilling "garage" impact, of "Roberts Church Problems": a shameless whirlpool of monochromatic perversion, with the drums circling in a mephistophelic loop as if storming the garrison of Heaven.

Having established that here ("The Cusp of Innocence, Prettily"), as in the previous albums, the art of repetition becomes a genuine act of subversion, it's worth noting that the trio also has no shortage of tricks up its sleeve when tackling chameleonic, multiform textures. On one hand, they push toward succulent android "dance" hypotheses, where the hidden message is: "if you want to shake your ass, at least do it properly" (the abstract, vertical, lopsided dub of "Shit No!", the crippled flickering of "Yes 9 10", the magnetic, metropolitan-scarred stroboscopy of "Friseur Nelson" and, above all, a "Girls Against Shit" that, once it gets going, climbs into a futuristic heavy-techno/funk wrapped in motoric propulsion and escorted by a spiraling solo); on the other, they blend in thoroughly diseased, mutant kraut-wave spells.

There then parades, in a cavalcade of purulent beauty, the crooked furnace of Cop Shoot Cop in "Penthouse Is a MUST", the Texan-school sci-fi-metallurgical psychedelia of "20 Years of Caring for the Nations Eyes", an inhuman & glorious weird black-metal experiment ("USA/Mexico"), the psychotic-nihilist cacophonies of "Pissing on a Shed" and Wolf Eyes remixed by a drunk techno-addict on "I'm MAKING My LUNCH!!". A repugnant, blasphemous celebration of morbid barbarism where melody only peeks through, at most, in the form of faint hints in the final farewell, because elsewhere the desire for carnage is always fucking intense: "Kolchak the Night Stalker" is the ideal soundtrack for slaughtering alien entities, "Hotel Denmark (You 3 – Ass, Pussy, Blow)" pays due respect to an "atomic" Big Black, and "Kings Heath Shit and Shine Appreciation Society" thanks the Dead C guitars for being so wickedly recognizable.

Truly vicious, Shit and Shine finally sink into the heroin nightmare — their own variant of Khanate's ultra-doom? — of "People Like You... REALLY!", embellished with desperate screams from beyond the hedge.

In 2010 comes their 12" Bass Puppy, billed as their dubstep record. And if dubstep it must be, dubstep it is… albeit on their own terms! The title track unfolds hypnotic and sleepily dub, torn apart by metallic shudders, filtered voices and subhuman noise. On the B-side, meanwhile, "Fuck You Folk Singers" carries the discussion forward in an even more stentorian and irreverent form.

A year later comes the Shit Split, shared with Expensive Shit. Our band contributes "Romantic And Macho At The Same Time", a quiet minimal groove that ends up exploding into a terrifying, if somewhat sterile, barrage of ultra-noise. Equally slight are the electro-noise evolutions of "Crueshal Version" by the American outfit.

On Rock Is Hell, two years later, comes the triple vinyl Le Grand Larance Prix, limited to 169 copies, a work that shifts the focus toward the more electronic side of their art.

The relentless hammering of the drum machine, the car-race samples and the synth trails that make up the backbone of "Flirtations at a Cocktail Party" mark an immediately obvious break from 229 2299: Girls Against Shit, where the percussive drive was still a matter of flesh and blood. A matter, we say with a touch of sadness, that was still vibrant and thrilling. Here, by contrast, once "Frankiea Theme" arrives (running on for over a quarter of an hour with a slap-worthy swagger in third-hand electro-noise mode), things start to take a decidedly less exciting turn.

That the metamorphosis should then drift, with "Switching 2 Nite Mode", toward ambient territories echoing Harmonia and La Düsseldorf is hardly surprising, even if it remains essentially anchored to an idea of minimalism that ends up wearing thin through sheer excess of stasis. Engaging, however, is the disco flair of "Frenchys Automotive", which essentially covers the Stones' "Emotional Rescue", spicing it up with android glitter.

From here on, everything proceeds without a hitch ("Klipp", with its motorik hysteria, is nonetheless worth keeping), reflecting an uninspired moment for a band that elsewhere has proven truly great.

That uninspired moment is confirmed by Jream Baby Jream, their fifth record for Riot Season.

The sheer, overwhelming impact of their earlier records has by now given way to a modus operandi built on a synthetic approach that, while it can be welcomed as a move toward renewing their formula, fails to bear particularly tasty fruit.

So, while flashes of their old sacred fire can still be glimpsed in the electro-noise furnaces of "Dinner With My Girlfriend" and "Woodpecker", whose monolithic beats serve as the android counterpart to what were once colossal devastations of skins and feedback, already by "Mermuda Triangle" the band settles into less fraught territory, almost suggesting a new-age version of Neu!, an impression partly echoed by "Youth Led Worship".

Incredible but true: the title track turns out to be a languid ballad, albeit one steeped in a glass of acid. The fatigue gripping their songwriting also shows in slightly more interesting numbers, like the magnetic dancefloor pulse of "Rodeo Girls".

No great harm done: sooner or later they were bound to stumble.

A few months later, for Rocket Recordings' "Collisions" series, comes a split shared with Gnod. The release's nearly thirty minutes are filled by just two tracks: the first, "Shitting Through the Eye of a Needle in a Haystack", finds the Manchester outfit working through a long industrial ritual that slowly devours dubstep, scattered noise and techno, projecting itself toward ever more hypnotic territories not far from Can-like fascinations (I'm thinking above all of "Tago Mago").

In "Ladies Circle", by contrast, Shit And Shine lean on a strobing groove, complete with android vocals, that betrays no shortage of Eighties echoes, limping, stuttering and self-destructuring into a hallucinogenic trip in which the brain turns to mush…

In February 2013, at the studios of independent radio station WFMU, the band got the chance to try their hand at the jazz idiom, recording a long track of barely twenty-three minutes, Live On Wfmu On Brian Turner's Show 02-26-13.

While the opening offers scattered tonal and percussive conflagrations, the bulk of the track is marked by a hypnotically swaying lope, in the background of which one can make out ethereal piano lines, wind-instrument ghosts lost in hyperspace and free-jazz skirmishes straight out of the garage. At the close, a shadowy spoken-word passage seems to turn everything into an enigmatic reworking of the Velvet Underground's "The Gift".

Confirming the gradual drift away from the percussive-noise rituals of their early days, a few months later Diagonal Records releases the Ep Diag004, which, starting right from the opening one-two ("Blowhannn" and "Value"), stubbornly indulges in a dancefloor-ready disengagement.

Here and there traces of lysergic detours and anarchic flourishes survive, but you need a magnifying glass to find them, since the ears are left completely at the mercy of a thoroughly harmless pulse, of monochrome patterns ("Shower Curtain") or of featherweight house digressions ("Dixie Peach").

Still in 2013, another Ep comes out on Gangsigns, Find Out What Happens When People Start Being Polite For A Fucking Change, but the quality unfortunately remains low. "Panther Piss" sends us onto the dancefloor with a circular groove aiming for hypnosis through sheer numbness. A few digital-noise squiggles here, watered-down soul simulacra there, and those easily pleased will be pleased. Then there's "Stop Being Sexual", a dub-dumbed variant that could go on for hours, an android, minimalist take on kraut-rock ("Darth Vador Flavor") and cut-rate italo-disco memories ("Corvette Museum"). Only "Public Display Of Pussy Whipped", with its blend of untamed industrial noise, funk guts and r'n'b vocal samples, manages to whet our appetite a little.

(26/07/2009 – 05/12/2013)

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